This week: Ham, The Stories that are Great Within Us, The Opposite of Loneliness, One More Thing, Boy in the Twilight.

Here’s a disparate collection of new collections — some invented, some based on real life, some a hybrid of fact and fiction.

Ham: Slices of Life, Sam Harris

Pop singer and actor Harris’s first collection features 16 slices from his life as a gay man adopting a child, as a confidante of Liza Minnelli, as the opening act for Aretha Franklin, and more. His publisher (wrongly) likens him to David Sedaris and the late David Rakoff, which seems to be the sorry fate of gay memoirists.

One More Thing: Stories and other Stories, B.J. Novak

You may know actor/writer B.J. Novak as Ryan Howard, who began as the disdainful young intern in The Office. This is his first collection, and includes dozens of short bits developed in front of live audiences. He is clever and amusing, and the fun of this book comes in observing his mental gymnastics. A good one for the bathroom bookshelf.

Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China, Yu Hua

Yu Hua’s sixth collection includes 13 stories, most of them about village life, many of them grim. Take the title story. An unsympathetic roadside fruit seller gives chase to a starving young boy who has stolen an apple. Before a crowd, he metes out a punishment that is merciless and unrelenting.

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories, Marina Keegan

Keegan graduated magna cum laude from Yale, she had a play scheduled for the New York Fringe Festival and had a job about to start at The New Yorker. Just five days after graduation she died in a car crash, at 22. The title essay in this collection went viral after her death. This book comes out in April.

The Stories that are Great Within Us, Edited by Barry Callaghan

If you ♥ Toronto — and even if you don’t — this volume, compiled by writer-editor Barry Callaghan, deserves a spot on the city section of your bookshelf. There’s an excellent representation of work by writers past (Callaghan’s dad, Barry, Matt Cohen, Gwendolyn MacEwen) and present (Sheila Heti, David Bezmozgis).

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